Andalusia, IL to Hannibal, MO
144 Miles (1,015 Total)
It’s been a strange week but we are making progress downriver. My grandmother passed away and I went home to be with family for a few days. My canoeing compadres took a few extra days off and then got back on the water with our friend Doug in my place, who we had been staying with for a few nights. They paddled until I got back and then I met up with them in Fort Madison, Iowa.
The river the past several days has been a wet one. It rained all day one of the days, and the next day there was some rain too, but mostly just viscous wind that whipped through the trees and made white caps out in the river. Of course the wind was out of the south (it always seems to be), and the swells were so large we could do nothing but pull over to shore and wait for it to die down. We took shelter from the 35+ MPH wind gusts in a privy near a boat access ramp. The bathroom was clean and didn’t smell bad, so it was a good place to spend the afternoon out of the wind and out of the rain.
We played cards for several hours to pass the time away until we were brave enough to try and canoe again. The wind had seemed to die down some so we tried paddling onward. This was mostly a futile exercise, and it became quite apparent nearly as soon as we hit the water that the wind hadn’t gone anywhere.
We hugged the shore to try and avoid most of the chop, but the canoe got battered with waves regardless. If the waves and the wind and the rain were all the things we struggled with, that would have been fine, but there was another evil out in the water with us too. All day (and the previous day) we had been running into the famed Asian Carp. First introduced to the US back in the 1970s to control weed and parasite growth in aquatic farms, Asian carp can be found in the Mississippi River all the way up to Minnesota. It’s considered an invasive species because the carp outcompete with other fish for food and space. There’s a lot of different varieties of Asian carp, but the one that is of most concern to us is the Silver Carp. These fish are pretty big. The biggest can get to 39 inches and weigh nearly 60 pounds, though they average around 15 inches and about 5-10 pounds. They’re a huge problem because they jump out of the water when they get startled. Some fish can jump nearly 10 feet high.
Paddling on the river, numerous fish jump out and scare us. Some jump over the canoe. Some hit the sides of the canoe. Some even manage to bounce into us. One carp smacked me right in the left shoulder, leaving an icky smear of mucous like spit all over my shirt. It was only a matter of time before one would land in the canoe itself.
“Oh shit! Ohhh! SHIT!” Qball screamed.
A carp lay in the back vestibule where his feet usually go. The fish was flapping all around the canoe, banging itself all over Qball and any of his stuff he had back there. There was blood on the fish as it struggled relentlessly to get back in the water.
“Head to shore, head to shore!” He shouted.
Eventually he was able to grab the thing and chuck it over the side of the canoe. His legs and sandals were covered in a thick slime.
“Are you cut?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “This is gross.”
He grabbed the sponged and tried getting the thick globs of fish funk off him. Scales lay all over the back of the canoe and on the sides.
“That was terrifying,” he said.
And it was.
On another occasion as we were battling the wind, another carp came flying out of the water like a jack in the box. It landed smack dab in the front of the canoe, where my feet go.
I screamed like a girl and raised my legs up over the fish. It flapped all around, banging around the front, smearing a bunch of fishy slime all over the place. I tried grabbing its tail to plop it back in the water, but it was too slippery and heavy to pick up with just one hand. It started flapping again, tail banging all over the floor, blood forming around its gils as it puffed them in and out, sucking in air and suffocating itself. Eventually it stopped writhing and I used both my hands to pick him up and throw him overboard.
It looked like a crime scene in the front of the canoe. Blood and scales lay over everything. Thick globs of guck plastered both my legs and my feet. Smells of rotting fish filled the air as I sat in the canoe, completely stunned, recovering from the terror of the Silver Carp that had just suicide bombed the canoe.
When my wits finally came back, I realized that my paddle was missing.
“My paddle!” I shouted. “It’s gone!”
We looked back into the waves and the wind, scanning the surface of the water.
We eventually spotted it 30 yards back and Qball paddled towards it. It snatched it up and cantinued paddling forward.
We eventually got to shore and I was able to take a breath. Between the waves, wind and the carp, I felt thoroughly exhausted. What seemed like an hour only got us a measly two more miles further. And that was it. There was no point in continuing onward. The wind and the carp had won, and it was time to throw in the towel and wait for tomorrow.
And just like flipping a switch, the next day brought sunny skies, warm weather and calm winds. Utterly amazing.
We landed in Hannibal, Missouri mid afternoon, which is the birth place of literary master Mark Twain. The town clearly capitalizes on this fact. Everything is named Twain this, and Twain that. There’s even a diner that uses his name. There’s a museum where you can tour his childhood house for only an 11 dollar fee, and a fence with a paint bucket and brush too, from his famous book Tom Sawyer. The bucket and brush were locked by a wire cable, so you wouldn’t be tempted to steal it. But if it pleased you, you were free to pick up the brush and make believe you were painting the fence. You could get someone to take your picture too, just so you could say you whitewashed the fence outside of Mark Twains childhood home.
But meanwhile, just a few blocks away, the river flows slow. It’s empty except for a few tugboats parked near the shore. It’s wide and long, and there’s a bridge for cars and another one for trains. It passes over the muddy river and makes a bunch of noise. There’s a small public marina where we parked our canoes. It’s nothing special, just some piers that jut out into the water, and there’s a handful of boats tied up to them.
When we arrived, we asked some people that were getting into their boat where we could find water.
“There’s a public restroom over there,” they said, pointing somewhere “over there”.
“Thanks,” we said.
“You picked a good year to visit Hannibal,” they said. “The city just voted to get rid of this marina. They’re gonna fill it in next year.”
“Why?” We asked, slightly confused.
“We’ve been fighting it for years,” they said. “It’s a shame.”
The marina wasn’t hurting nobody. Where would the people coming by boat dock up to visit the city, to see Mark Twains childhood home?
For a man who based many stories on the love of this river, it seemed odd the city would completely limit river access to it. It’s kind of like if the Ford museum in Detroit decided to get rid of all the access roads to the facility. It doesn’t make any sense.
Oh well. As Twain himself said, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”
